Authors: Ruth Francisco
Would I be happier if I knew Peter was dead than I was with the possibility I might see him again?
The best thing that came out of the oil crisis was Cynthia’s school closed.
With tax revenues plummeting, Santa Monica, like Los Angeles, began shutting the doors to a number of high end schools—the accelerated, arts, and special education schools.
Cynthia stayed home while my parents decided what to do with her.
She seemed happier, too.
She appeared less obsessed with Islam.
She spent time with her new boyfriend, Seth Cohen, who lived down the street.
Her transformation was miraculous, no longer pensive and quiet, worried about the fate of her soul and the Muslim
diaspora
.
She was back to painting her nails and sunbathing by the pool and talking on the phone for hours and refusing to do anything Mother asked her to do.
Gone were her pink gauze mosquito net and harem pants, gone were the
Quran
and her religious books, gone were her headscarves and pious looks.
Back to eating hamburgers and bologna sandwiches.
It was if her Islam fixation never happened.
The poster of
Buraq
over her bed remained.
I suspected her love of the horse never had much to do with Islam.
What young girl could resist a flying white horse, his muscular haunches, his glistening coat, his electrified mane, his defiant eyes, his flaring nostrils?
Buraq
was testosterone in flight.
Mother was so relieved at Cynthia’s renewed normality she decided to forget about school for a while and allow Cynthia an old-fashioned vacation.
She seemed to think Cynthia needed to be indulged after the self-imposed discipline she endured under her “Muslim phase,” as Mother now called it.
Many families in Santa Monica were sending their children to private schools.
Often parents who could afford
only one tuition
chose to send their sons.
I realized this when one of Cynthia’s friends who was playing at the house mentioned her brother was in school.
When I asked her why she wasn’t, she said, “I got lucky.
My parents can’t afford to send us both.”
I thought of all the women now out of jobs, who, like my mother, were slipping back into domestic work as if they had been housewives all of their lives.
Once unemployment reached sixteen percent, I began to hear stories of women harassed for taking jobs a man might want.
Many families cut down to one car, and invariably it was the man of the house who drove.
In Detroit and in communities that bordered Islamic neighborhoods, women were showing up at hospitals more and more frequently, brutally beaten for not dressing modestly or other misbehavior, real or imagined.
Reports of domestic abuse were skyrocketing.
Were we regressing as women?
Was Islamic
puritanism
seeping into our culture?
Los Angeles Mayor Malcolm Jefferson issued a recommendation that, because of the incidents of street harassment to women in certain parts of the city, women should dress discreetly when out of the home.
Headscarves were advised in some parts of town.
From the mosque in Santa Monica, the amplified call to prayer pierced the still moist ocean air five times a day.
I lay in bed listening.
I recalled Anne Frank’s description of the
Westertoren
clock which she heard from her secret annex, ringing on the quarter hour.
I imagined how the chimes brought her comfort, reassuring her that even though it passed slowly, time went on, and if time went on, there was the possibility of change, of the war ending, her life restored.
Or perhaps the chimes made her anxious, reminding her of the passing hours of captivity, reminding her she was inside and the world was outside, and there was a reason it was so, just as the call of the muezzin was a constant reminder to me of what was happening to the world.
I got a letter from Alex.
That was a first.
In boot camp he wasn’t allowed phone calls, e-mails, or visits.
He seemed proud to have lost ten pounds, which seemed impossible because he had always been trim and athletic.
Alex never really shared his intimate thoughts with me, and in his letter I saw a new side of him.
I figured the torment he was suffering at Parris Island was making him sentimental.
He even mentioned a prank I once played on him when we were younger when I covered the toilet bowl in his bathroom with Saran Wrap.
As children we were constantly at war, but now he called me “his closest friend,” and wrote, “
you
are the only one I can talk to,” and “I miss you.
I even miss your nails raking my skin.
Send me a letter.
Letters are the only thing keeping us going.”
At first his simpering tone surprised me.
Then I was furious.
I had no idea why.
Yes I did.
I was fed up.
It wasn’t fair.
I was missing out on what was supposed to be my life.
I was supposed to be partying through my senior year at college, interviewing for an exciting career in New York or Washington, planning for my own apartment, a life with Peter, and down the road, maybe children.
At least I should be seeing friends, but everyone I knew was away at college or in the military.
Gas was too expensive for people to go out much anyhow.
Half the places we used to hang out at were closed.
I knew I should be grateful I had a job, but I was mad.
Sure I was spoiled, but I deserved some fun.
I thought of my parents at my age—going to rock concerts, getting high, getting laid, traveling the world, volunteering for environmental causes, jumping from job to job, feeling out different careers and new places.
That sense of hope and expectation, that feeling of fun was gone.
Where were my choices?
As the world beyond became more frightening, my world was getting smaller and smaller, constricting me.
I worked, watched the news, ate, and slept.
I was shrinking, my hopes were shrinking,
my
dreams were shrinking.
It broke my heart Cynthia might never get to do the things I did—ice skating, music classes, traveling, camps, and college.
She deserved a childhood.
It wasn’t fair.
Anne Frank described feeling like a songbird hurling itself against the bars of its cage.
That’s exactly how I felt.
What made me even more furious was I was too much of a coward to do anything about it.
Suddenly I couldn’t stand myself any longer.
I stomped out of the house and got in my car—I had no idea where I was going.
I didn’t care.
I cut up north to San Vicente Boulevard and turned right, driving as fast as I could, fifty, sixty,
seventy
.
I didn’t care I was wasting gas on a frivolous drive.
I wanted to waste gas.
I wanted to be bad, to get drunk, to crash my car against a brick wall, to plunge off a cliff into the Hollywood sign.
I drove faster and faster.
I shot up to Sunset, twisting and turning around the curves, past the UCLA campus, then right on
Hilgard
into Westwood.
Ha!
The miracle of the embargo!
Parking in Westwood.
I jammed a few coins into a meter, impatiently banging it until the quarters dropped, scanning the street, scouting for trouble—a movie premier, a gang of students, anyone, anything.
I wanted to bang myself against other bodies.
I wanted to hit.
I was out of luck.
Westwood was a ghost town.
The cafes empty, stores vacant, parking spaces everywhere.
Then I heard a megaphone, some whistles and clapping—two or three blocks away.
A couple of people were walking in that direction.
I followed them to Wilshire Boulevard, then down a few blocks west to the federal building on Veteran, a favorite site for demonstrations.
I saw a huge mass of people completely blocking the eight-lane street, thousands upon thousands.
I’d never seen so many people, many women wearing
chadors,
black cloths wrapped around their entire bodies, gangs of young men, pushing and shoving.
I hurried toward them.
Police cars were everywhere, setting up barricades, lining up shoulder to shoulder.
Dozens of people carried signs—“No Fascist Camps,” “Mullet is a Nazi,” “Jewish Fascists got to go.”
Others waved the United Nations of Islam flag—a crescent moon on a world map.
I couldn’t make out what was happening.
No one appeared to be marching.
Someone who stood above the crowd was yelling into a megaphone in Arabic, and police all up and down the street were telling people to stand back.
The pulsing mass of humanity went on for blocks and blocks, spilling up the side streets, and they all seemed to be pushing to get closer like ants around a crumb of bread.
A space began to form in the middle of the crowd, turning like the eye of a storm, and there seemed to be a fight, two groups charging each other, and the space began to get bigger, and people who had been standing still were pushing and hitting and trying to get away.
I should have turned and run, but I wanted to see more.
The police, who were far from the center of the crowd, didn’t see what
was happening until people
started to push out from the center, falling over barricades, running and pushing, stampeding up the street.
Police moved in with shields and riot gear, but there weren’t enough officers.
People pushed around them and charged up the streets.
I turned and started running back to the car.
Police cars screeched past me, others stopping in front, blocking the street.
Swat teams jumped out of vans, closing off streets.
I turned and looked back toward the federal building.
A gray mist of teargas rose above the hysterical crowd, which was now charging up the streets, breaking storefront windows as it passed.
I worried about my car.
I kept on running even though I couldn’t remember where I had parked.
I heard guns going off, but didn’t know if it was the police or the demonstrators.
People charged past me, pushing me into the buildings; others came at me through parking lots and alleys.
I saw two boys tear off the door of a newspaper dispenser and throw it into a passing car.
Café chairs and tables went through the windows and into the street.
Finally I remembered where I had parked and dashed across the street in front of a police car.
As I looked back, I saw a car blazing, a few bodies down on the pavement, then a girl and boy running toward me, holding hands, eyes terrified.
The boy had blood on his face.
Cynthia and her friend Seth.
I waited, shoving shoulders away as panicked pedestrians bumped past.
Cynthia saw me first.
I grabbed her hand and led her up the
sidewalk,
glancing back to make sure Seth was still attached.
His face looked worse than I first thought.
What in hell was he thinking?
A Jew at a Muslim rally?
The car looked all right.
I opened the passenger door.
Seth and Cynthia jumped in.
I told them to get down—I don’t know why—I guess I imagined stones smashing through the windows.
I made a U-turn, driving slowly as people dove around the car.
As soon as I got to
Hilgard
, I tore back up to Sunset.
“What in hell were you doing?” I yelled, slowing the car to a legal speed.
Two heads popped up from the back seat.
“How bad are you, Seth?
Do we need a hospital?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Ann,” whimpered Cynthia.
“I’m sorry.
Don’t tell Mom or Dad.
Please.
I just wanted to see the rally.”
“So you brought Seth?
That was smart.”
“Someone spat on him.
Someone else hit him with a placard.”